Sponsored by 148Apps, the second annual ‘Best App Ever Awards’ nominees have recently been published at bestappever.com and voting is now open. The annual competition seeks to find the best apps in the iTunes App store. The goal of the project is to spotlight the very best apps based on consumer views, not just the highest sellers of 2009. And according to consumers, 8 out of the top 10 ‘best apps’ this year are in fact, games.
Lasting just under a month, the public nomination process saw 26,899 opinions, and listed 3,639 different apps. BestAppEver breaks apps down into 56 unique award categories. Along with public opinions, 148Apps also brought in a team of industry people and iPhone application developers to help narrow down the nomination process.
Again, while BestAppEver breaks nominations out into 56 distinct categories, there’s one category that is very unique: (quite literally) Best App. The nominees for this category represent the top 10 vote getters in the initial round of voting. App developer Firemint had two entries make the list, Real Racing and Flight Control, priced at $4.99 and $0.99 respectively. But perhaps the most notable of all nominees is ngmoco’s free, free-to-play FPS shooter: Eliminate.
You’ll remember that ngmoco was one of the very first iPhone app developers to take advantage of Apple removing the microtransactions restriction, even choosing to break the news via a tweet. A little over a half a month later, they made good on their promise and delivered a free-to-play handheld shooter with quite good graphics and a microtransaction system in place. Now, not that I’m trying to rig the voting – but doesn’t a free-to-play app certainly deserve a vote? Especially when it’s the only free app in the list?
Voting is now open at bestappever.com and closes on January 31st. Winners will be announced on February 10th at the 2010 Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
Tags: app store, Apple, application developers, eliminate, games, iphone, itunes, macworld expo, microtransactions, ngmoco
